The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Andrew Garfield Is the World's Most Charming Superhero

For a little context, let me just say that I love 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man, Marc Webb’s completely unnecessary but fun as hell anyway reboot of Marvel’s web-slinger series. It’s cartoony and clever and perfectly proportioned—compared with the mega-sized movies in the Avengers universe, this new Spider-Man is downright quaint. I know some people didn’t feel quite as positive about the film, so those of you may want to take it with a grain of salt when I say that The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which opens this week, is also an amiable superhero adventure, though not quite as nimble and efficient as its predecessor.

The key to this franchise’s success is, yes, partly Webb’s quick-witted direction, but mostly its star, Andrew Garfield. This lanky half American, half Brit is adorably mussy haired and gawky, but also makes for a credibly brooding superhero. And his chemistry with his real-life love interest, Emma Stone, fills the films with a giddy, swoony energy that makes even the non-romantic parts more exciting. They’re so good together that the whole movie feels kinda romantic, charged with a youthful spirit that revives a character made so mopish and dull by Tobey Maguire.

Of course, Garfield’s Peter Parker and Stone’s Gwen Stacy can’t meet-cute again, so the sequel suffers some, without that particular spark. But the film nearly makes up for it in other ways, chiefly by casting the story into darkness and, intriguingly, letting it stay there for most of the movie. Peter has graduated from high school (Garfield, who is 30, somehow doesn’t lose himself in the age gap) and the world is a bigger, scarier place than it once seemed. Though, not too much bigger. This is not the planet-rumbling doomsday stuff of The Avengers that we’re dealing with here. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 keeps its focus solely on New York City, everything beyond it presumably safe for now.

As seems to be a requirement of superhero sequels, this latest adventure ups the ante in terms of villains, pitting Spidey against Paul Giamatti’s Rhino, Jamie Foxx’s Electro, and Dane DeHaan’s Harry Osborn. (We all know who Harry Osborn becomes, right?) It gets pretty crowded, but the movie does a nice job of weaving the various stories together, the tension and stakes ever rising on the way to the film’s big, bruising climax. Those of you in the know may have seen photos from the set of a particular character in a particular outfit, so you can probably guess what happens at the end of this movie. But unlike aspects of the Avengers movies, nothing in Amazing Spider-Man feels too much like an insidery wink to the diehards. (Which is why, I suspect, some of the diehards don’t like it.)

Aside from the sparkling Garfield and Stone, Webb’s movies benefit from a fine eye for casting. Foxx does a good stammering, thwarted nerd, before transforming into the raging villain. (Like in many superhero movies, his motivation for wanting to destroy Spider-Man could be a little better fleshed-out.) DeHaan was a good choice for the moody, petulant Harry, the aggrieved rich kid with a whole lot of scores to settle. I’m sure someday DeHaan will get out of the tortured-teen ghetto, but at the moment he’s pretty much our best guy for these kinds of roles. Sally Field, a feistier Aunt May than Rosemary Harris played in Sam Raimi’s films, gets one big, juicy scene this time around, this being a superhero film that isn’t afraid of a little domestic melodrama.

There are a few moments when I wished this trilogy midway point was more concerned with existing as a standalone movie than setting us up for what comes next, and at times the rush of exposition feels a bit too hurried and jerry-rigged. But that also lends the film a winning scrappiness. I like that these films’ ambitions aren’t too outsized, that they seem pretty humble when compared with, say, the bloated and portentous Man of Steel. Spider-Man is a fun character who exists in a silly world that is only sometimes visited by gloom and tragedy. Webb and his team get that mixture right most of the time, so his films often have the snappy, but satisfying, narrative texture of the comic books they’re based on.

I wonder in some ways if these movies were made better by how soon they arrived after the last trio of Spider-Man adventures. Sure they had the unenviable task of proving doubters wrong, but they also didn’t have to be solely responsible for doing Spidey filmic justice. Without the heavy burden of definitiveness, it was possible to be loose and playful, capturing if not every particular facet of why we like Spider-Man, at least the pluck and vim that’s made him so enduring. I like these puckish versions of this treasured American myth, which eschew solemn reverence in favor of a lightness that lets them soar.